Plug and socket connectors are widely used in electronics and electrical engineering. As a rule, they consist of a male plug with contact pins and a plug receptacle with female contact sockets. The socket and pins are made of an elastic electro-conducting material. This material is shaped so that it will be elastically deformed when the male plug is inserted into the plug receptacle. This ensures the compression required for proper contact. This is why a plug and socket connector can be connected or disconnected with an effort. This makes it difficult to determine whether or not the male plug is properly aligned with the plug receptacle. Contact pins are often subject to non-elastic deformation. This causes the plug connector to fail.
Additional structural elements are used to ensure more reliable electrical contact and more reliable locking the male plug connection. They align and compress the matching contacts or couple contact housings. Notably, such compression results from additional operations (assembling together the contact housing, shifting or turning compressive elements, etc.). Before the contacts can be disconnected, one also needs to perform an operation to release the contacts or separate their housings.
Prior art discloses a ZIF connector (Zero Insertion Force) for a processor (U.S. Pat. No. 6,164,999), comprising a matrix of contact sockets on a PC motherboard circuit, a movable platform with openings for contact pins of the processor, and an arm for shifting the platform relative to the matrix of contact sockets. To mount the processor into the socket, the arm has to be lifted perpendicularly to the motherboard. In this case the openings of the movable platform are aligned with the contact sockets. The processor contact pins freely pass through the openings of the movable platform and are inserted into contact sockets. This reduces the risk of damage to contact elements.
Then the arm is lowered toward the motherboard and placed behind a tongue on the socket frame, locking the processor in the socket. The movable platform shifts the processor contact pins in a transverse direction relative to the contact sockets, pressing them to the walls of contact sockets with the force of the locked arm.
In such a connector the reliability of each contact depends on the precision of manufacturing and installation of the matrix of contact sockets on the mother board and the matrix of contact pins on the processor. To rule out the effect of installation imprecision, the compression force created by the arm is increased. This in turn increases the labor intensity of production and installation and the cost of the processor and motherboard. There is a high risk of processor misalignment and incorrect locking, since the force that presses the contact pins to the contact sockets considerably exceeds the required force. Misalignment may result in damage to the processor contact pins.
Prior art discloses another plug and socket connector (Patent RU 2 295 182 C 1) that has been chosen as a prototype (the nearest prior art device) for this invention. It comprises a male plug and a socket (plug receptacle). The plug receptacle is equipped with a lock. It can retain a slider in a position wherein contact pins or plates of the male plug can freely enter the contact sockets. There is a lock release button in the middle of contact sockets at the point where contact pins of the male plug enter the plug receptacle. It releases the lock when pressed by the body of the male plug inserted into the plug receptacle. Contact sockets are made in the shape of clamps of a curved resilient material. At the base of the contact sockets there are pads, being either in contact with one another or at a distance that is smaller than the thickness of the contact pins or plates. There are tongues at one of the ends. The tongues are located in hollows in the slider. The tongues can shift the slider and compress the contact pins or plates when the lock is opened.
This plug-and-socket connector is convenient to use. Its electrical contacts are connected with a single effortless move. All contact pins are embedded into contact sockets to a requisite depth. Proper compression force between the pin and the contact socket is created. With a single press of the arm, the electrical contacts are disconnected and the male plug is removed from the plug receptacle. The force of compression between contacts in each contact socket depends on the elasticity of this socket and does not depend on the precision of installation of the matrix of contact sockets and the matrix of contact pins or plates. Still, this design also has its shortcomings. The area of reliable contact between the pin and contact socket is small, since the compression force is applied only by pads at the end of contact sockets. The male plug pins have to be quite long, since the slider does not allow the contact pins to be inserted into the plug receptacle contact sockets all the way through. This results in an increased connector height, which is not always convenient and technologically feasible.